Mamo, the show about movies and popular culture, is now available at RowThree.com, along with our traditional exhibition venues of Blogspot, Facebook, and the iTunes music store. That's four times the Mamo for the same Mam-low price!
I now have what can accurately be described as a ridiculous quantity of rum. 2 more bottles last night, one of which has naked dancing girls on it (that one's from my mother). I have so much rum, if things ever got silly at my apartment, we could have a rum fight. And still have rum left over for sippin'. Mmm rum fight.
The rum will help: I'm not gonna lie to ya, it's been challenging. I had a shite week, and a shite weekend because of it, and I gloomed around a lot of the time and lay catatonic for most of the rest of the time, and started to feel better for about an hour yesterday and now am right back into weary disaffectation and a general lack of good mood. These times are hard; not insurmountably so, but they wear on you. I could do with a win, or at least a sunny hot vacation.
I guess I make that mistake every year: thinking I don't need a few days to get the fuck out of here and do something which is as meaningless as my day-to-day, but in an entirely different way. Righteous meaninglessness.
Speaking of righteous meaninglessness, OH MY GOD THE BORINGEST OSCARS EVER. The whole thing looked like a descent into utter crapitude till Anne Hathaway was brought onto the stage, and then it suggested the possibility of a good show for a few minutes, and then it died a thousand deaths again as they trotted out the "here's how we make a movie" approach to awards order. Add the Slumdog march to glory and it's actually as uninvolving a year as there's been in my memory. We did our usual live-podcasting thing and ended up with a 30-minute show when all the segments were combined, which is a bit longer than usual, but surely we were only so loquacious to combat the encroaching torpor. (And also because we are utterly in love with the sound of our own voices, and with each other, and with cinema itself.) Listen to the Mamo here.
I'm going to leave you with some collected pull quotes from the last 24 hours, along with a few tips to make living alone less awful.
"Do you call your boobs your 'killer whales?'" - Adam to Caitlin
"You know what I like? I like how, over time, Adam and I have switched personalities." - Me, not related to prior quote
"DON'T fall in love with me." - Steve Martin to Tina Fey
"Whoa! Her eyes are pretend!" - Sasha, watching commercials again for the first time in a year
"Right now Jack Nicholson is applying a thimblefull of bleach to Keira Knightley's asshole." - the answer to why neither were at the Oscar show
Transitioning... transitioning... while the domain nameservers are switching over I have no email, and through strange coincidence my phone is not taking incoming calls either. Unexpectedly hermited, I am enjoying some peace and quiet. I wonder if the blog will even work in this new, strange server. Well I guess we'll find out momentarily.
Now don't get creeped out, but: I have large windows looking north on a series of apartment buildings, and so rather naturally I gaze out over the vista while, say, talking on the phone and/or ruminating upon things. Now I noticed, just randomly, that on Valentine's Day, one of the individuals in an apartment opposite mine was watching pornography on his very, very, very large television. The television faces the window, and is very, very, very large, and as such (from my vantage point) it essentially is the window, for all intents and purposes. And that window is porn. It was so on Valentine's Day, and now inevitably every time I gaze out on my vista, my eyes are drawn back there to see what's the what now, and it's porn. Lots, and lots, and lots of porn. It's amazing to me that with only the naked (heh) human eye, one can discern porn indisputably from over 1000 feet away. I wonder, had I a much larger television and more than a passing interest in porn, if I would also have my television face the window so that I would be beaming my porn out into the cosmos like my apartment-facing neighbour. I'm not so sure. I've never quite removed myself from the 12-year-old boy gut-feel that porn is something to be secreted, hoarded, and absolutely never admitted to in any tangible sense. Porn is for dark corners, not 60-inch plasmas.
That newfangled HDTV Simpsons opening credits, though, that sure as fuck is for 60-inch plasmas. It was very exciting right up till I realized that this is, demonstrably, the moment that The Simpsons has inextricably jumped the shark. They must now demonstrably be within seconds of being cancelled. Like that year of The X Files with Anabeth Gish and the T-1000. Sweet, merciful cancellation. Can you believe The Simpsons went twenty years? And only about three of them sucked?
Hey - if you saw Medicine for Melancholy at the festival (or elsewhere) (and if you didn't/haven't, you really should), check out the interview with Barry Jenkins on this week's installment of The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell. (The Soderbergh one from a few weeks back, too, is fairly kickass.) Additionally, there's a new Mamo that doesn't seem to be syndicating correctly, so check that out too.
This week was long and complex and performance-reviewy, and I am tired and have yet to get into my whiskey as was promised to me by me, about six hours ago. I'm sure we have much to discuss, like why Dollhouse sucked so bad, but we will have to talk about it later.
Did I dream about the new season of Lost last night: yes.
Did my dream about the new season of Lost involve the revelation of a giant retro robot rampaging around the island, and poor Desmond being turned into a (smaller) robot as well: yes.
Should the new season of Lost, then, be all about robots if it wants to satisfy my desire: yes.
I'm telling you, that Beren & Luthien thing has got to be a movie. It has all the things "the kids" like. They even pull a Zolo when Beren holds up the Silmaril to Carcharoth and the wolf just goes ahead and bites the hand clean off. And whether you call him Dr. Zolo, Minister of Antiquities, or Col. Zolo, Deputy Commander of the Secret Police, he is still just a butcher.
Today I am calling telecommunication companies and eluding their ceaseless marketing campaigns by lies and deceit, and leaving lengthy voice mails for my co-workers along the lines of what Alpine says here. It's fun. While I'm doing that, here's a hot fresh Mamo for your digestion.
Speaking of digestion, yesterday Christy took me out for bruuuuuuuuuuuuuunch!!! (so named because it's so goddamned big.) I am planning to eat again on Tuesday.
Oh: and I might have inadvertently posted some October 2005 blog entries to the front page before re-dating them. So if you thought I suddenly took a turn for the turbo-angsty, that's why. Stupid Movable Type. Is importing HTML-based blog entries into an MT database really that far beyond the ken?
If you liked yesterday's review of Quantum of Solace, you'll love today's Mamo, where I basically state the same opinion and even occasionally parrot the same lines. Well that's what you get for thinking out your review while you're watching the film.
If you haven't joined us on Facebook yet, well, why haven't you?
The long, long, long, (long) delayed Mamo where we recap our summer has finally been posted here, and I presume it will be amusing. Hey, now would be a great time for you to join our Facebook group if you haven't already. Just Facebook for "Mamo" and I presume the rest takes care of itself.
Nuit Blanche 2008? = teh suck. Proved an apt opportunity, however, for me to watch Sarafina and Demetre free-associate alternate art pieces which would have been wholesale more enjoyable than anything on display last night. Dancing fat guys factor frequently, at least to Demetre, in terms of rescuing existing exhibits from their suckness. Me, I just keep drifting back to Plo Wars, even though I don't entirely "own" the idea. Does anyone have a couple hundred Plo Koons lying around?
Looks like Warner is indeed reading a Lord of the Rings trilogy blu-ray for release next year, which seems about right in terms of my mounting desire to watch the flicks again (and here's the dancing fat guy!). Would be nice, what with the Hobbit imminent and Lovely Bones finally seeing release next fall; I miss me the Peej. In the meantime, I am in a fine swiss pickle over the Godfather blu-ray series. This is a classic example of what not to do in a format upgrade quandary: classic films that I love but watch infrequently, that look "all right" on standard DVD but not great, and fuck me if that new box set ain't expensive. Criminy.
With Chocolate last night, the show closed on my least enjoyable TIFF ever, and I am ready to move on to other things. My blogTO coverage is here, and our final podcast of the festival is here. And my inevitable breakdown of what was actually worth my time goes like this:
That dog won't hunt: Derrière Moi, Deadgirl, The Burrowers, Martyrs, The Secret of Moonacre
That dog will hunt, but chooses not to: Rocknrolla, Witch Hunt, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, White Night Wedding, Still Walking, The Hurt Locker, Better Things, The Dungeon Masters, Gomorrah, Tokyo Sonata, The Sky Crawlers
That dog might occasionally bring back a rabbit or something, but if so, that rabbit is rangy and has fur missing and might already have been dead when the dog found it: Waltz With Bashir, JCVD, Delta, Achilles and the Tortoise, Religulous, Vinyan, Blood Trail, Not Quite Hollywood, Ashes of Time Redux, Hooked, The Wrestler, Of Time and the City, Maman est chez le coiffeur, Three Wise Men, Me and Orson Welles, American Swing, Sexykiller, ONLY, Chocolate
That dog can certainly hunt: Soul Power, Detroit Metal City, Sauna, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, Acolytes, The Brothers Bloom, Medicine for Melancholy, Synecdoche, New York, Acne, At the Edge of the World, The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
That dog is a goddamned outstanding hunter: C'est pas moi, je le jure!, Flame & Citron, It Might Get Loud, Tears for Sale, Ché
I am such a sucker for hitting shit with other shit. In At the Edge of the World, they hit a ship with another ship! This utterly redeemed an otherwise painfully one-sided documentary about crazy-ass "pirates" who interfere with whaling activities. In my day, pirates didn't try to help anything. They took what they wanted, and gave nothing back! Well anyway, in the movie, the pirate ship pulls up on this Japanese whaling ship and without even so much as a "here's something you can't do," the captain yanks the wheel hard over and KA-BOOM! they knock straight into the bad guys AND damage their own bow on the impact AND proceed to ram right into an iceberg immediately after, like one of those skater punk kids who tries to ride a railing down a flight of stairs, trips on his own baggy pants, and smashes his face off the railing AND the stairs AND their skateboard. Fantastic.
Right now they're showing The Celluloid Closet in Dundas Square, which goes to show you just how much the world has come along in 15 years. Man. That movie makes me want to watch Ben-Hur again.
I want to say one more thing about Acne, which we saw yesterday: that is far and away the finest depiction of a tween having routine, almost bored sex with a prostitute that I've ever seen. Actually (obviously) it's the only depiction of a tween having sex with a prostitute that I've ever seen. Like XXY last year, a Uruguayan film has really gone to the transgressive side of the Force in terms of showing me subject matter that nobody could ever get made here in Canada. It kinda makes me wonder what the hell is going on, down in Uruguay. Based on the stories of the only person I've ever known who actually lived there, the whole country is nothing but bleeding head wounds and old men shooting at chickens. And yet it's also apparently detailed, emotionally relevant and considerate gender-identity and coming-of-age cinema. I gotta visit that country.
Hey, we did our second Mamo yesterday, and it was all right.
I like my exploitation the way I like my coffee: grandé and loaded with cream. As such, Acolytes was pretty much perfect - where did this come from? The film was cunningly lensed - what I call the Hell Up In Harlem Factor. See, anyone can write an exploitation flick (in this case, an Aussie thrash-n'-scare about some wannabe badasses who stumble upon a much bigger badass) but 9 times out of 10, these films are shot like pornos or Kevin Smith movies i.e. unimaginatively. Then along comes Hell Up in Harlem, which puts Martin Scorsese in his place in the same year as Mean Streets. Goddamn thing's just tremendously aggressive with its camera, and so was Acolytes, finding frames and moments and beats that so stupendously elevated the material that I sat there with a big dumb grin on my face pretty much throughout. At the end of the day it's still a flick about 3 kids who find a dead backpacker. But it handed Deadgirl its dead ass, I'll tell you.
So last night was an improvement over most of yesterday. Hooked, which was actually a second pick for me, was far and away the most interesting use of camera I've seen at the festival thus far - entirely subjective, from the points of view of 2 principal characters, 1 supporting, and about 3 cameos. If the story this was hung around was rather flimsy - an ultra-low-budget concept which uses a riverside as its major location and two separate spots on said riverside for the majority of its scenes - the first-person gag was still pretty absorbing. I don't need the gimmicks where characters look at themselves in the mirror, but something profoundly unsettling develops in darting back and forth between two sides of the same conversation, both actors addressing the (other) camera (/you) like an MPD schizo. I almost wish the flick hadn't been subtitled - lots to get out of the use of editing here, too, if you weren't always having to go to the subtitles across or during specific shots.
Mamo #121 is posted for your convenience. Hopefully we'll get another couple done before the end but we didn't do a great job of coordinating our schedules this year. [blush]
It's now officially the first morning that's too cold to sit outside in a t-shirt. I am in Dundas Square, across from the scramble crossing I never get to properly use, and staring up at a giant poster for Nights in Rodanthe starring a very lumpy and romantically intent Richard Gere. (Rodanthe is played by Diane Lane.) Reminding me that It's Never Too Late For A Second Chance, I think I'll go have another coffee.
Boy, Warner Bros. is sure as fuck the studio to watch these days. In the wake of The Dark Knight's ass-kickery, they've moved a Harry Potter, re-strategized their comic book movie development, been attacked by a rival picturehouse over Watchmen, and now shitcanned the Bryan Singer Superman franchise in favour of a Letterier-ish Hulk-style reboot.
As the seventh-last surviving male who liked Superman Returns, I'm dismayed, though not much. Still, the prevailing notion that "going dark" is the appropriate treatment of the entirety of DC's character stable is sort of insane. I can see a dark Green Arrow movie or Green Lantern, but Flash? Wonder Woman? Superman? Nuh.
We did a Mamo on the weekend before this latest iteration of the news broke, but which considers some of WB's moves at length, should you choose to listen to it.
One scathing email, two failed mover negotations, two large going-away meals within three hours of each other, one supervisory smackdown, three hotel getaway scheme needs assessments, one unplanned wander around the midtown area, and one half-accurate and hilarious description of my job later, I'm feeling quite a bit better thank you. I would like to go see Batman again, and then I think everything will be set to rights.
No more cell phone driving Ontario? OK. The telecommunications industry and its foibles has been much in my mind of late, but due to various conflicts of interest I will have to publish my findings at another time. Until then, please do not call me while I am driving.
In the more immediate future, I need a couch.
On another topic, I'm not entirely sure how we got a hundred and nineteen shows into this deal before stumbling upon the title "Mamo a Mamo," but we've finally arrived, and with that clever bit of pun titleage, my esteem for Matty Price has grown another hectolitre. Here's Mamo #119: Mamo a Mamo, in which further Batmania is discussed.
And in the "let's further prove that we just don't get it" sweepstakes, Sony is trying to widen the Spider-Man movie platform with a Venom spin-off. I for one couldn't be more thrilled: Spider-Man 3 being the only entry in the series that I can actually enjoy (I own it on Blu-Ray!) and Venom being the worst thing about that awful, awful movie, I must expect that a Topher Grace-headlined Venom flick would be fan-fucking-tastic, not just in a so-good-it's-bad way, but also in a so-bad-it's-hallucination-inducing sort of way. I can see molten rivers of obsidian CG goo in my mind's eye right now... hopefully they relocate the story to a smaller city in the American midwest where Venom arrives as a hapless outsider on the run... and have an orphaned kid involved, who forms a tender bond with the oil-slick-with-a-heart-of-gold Venom... It'll be the story of us, man, who we are right now, all us loners and losers and people made of glop out there. Yeah. That's moviemaking.
Three whole years of Mamo's extraordinary amazingtude have brought us right back to the beginning: Christopher Nolan's done a Batman movie, and holy shafizzle, they don't come any better than this. Matty Price and I recorded this Mamo on Tuesday night and not only did it turn out to be really, really long (which is always fairly satisfying), but also rather good (which is equally satisfying if not more so). Y'know, I'm just damn glad we've been doing this thing for three whole years with no sign of stopping. It's starting to feel like an actual Thing.
With Matty Price's road trip imminent (and he's not taking me!), we knocked off another Mamo, our last before The Dark Knight. Which makes this anniversary season: we actually crossed the three-year threshold last week (and MP and Leah and Sarafina and I had a generally stupendous dinner at Mercato to celebrate... buffalo mozzarella flown in that morning from Italy, mmmmmm), and given that Batman Begins was our first show, expect the TDK episode to be... gushy. You know, I haven't actually gone back to listen to that first podcast in a good long while. I should do that, just to see how completely clued out we were.
I must also regretfully report that I am completely lost when it comes to the subject of frappucinos.
On the subject of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan currently owns 88% of my brain. I can hear his voice in my head right now. It's calming.
No time for much of anything these days - too busy, livin', man! - but here's yer podcast. This week we do some reader mail, speculate on who would win in a fight (X-Wing fighters vs. Carrie Bradshaw's walk-in closet), and drool on Batman just a bit more.
Mamo #115: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Unwieldy Title That Robs the Movie of a Certain Elegance Required for this Kind of Thing to Work
I'm fairly sure one of our Mamo listeners actually stood up and warned us not to review Indy IV negatively - something about not wanting to be one of those hater thirtysomethings who can't enjoy a flick cuz they're just generally grumpy about everything. Well, grumpy or not... though film criticism is hardly our regular bag on this show, we spend about the first twenty minutes of this particular Mamo discussing what went wrong with the eminent archaeologist this time around. Then, we get into the numbahs. It's good to be Mamo.
Flick made money, anyway. I also wouldn't mind linking out to these tworeviews, not to pile on the hate, but just because I think they're rather well done.
Last night Daniel gave me a Final Cut Pro crash course on some of the VCR9 footage. Since I never kept that test footage from way the hell back in the day when Mark and I were fucking around with our first sound mixer, I kept this instead.
Also did a podcast last night, discussed the more intriguing possibilities Blue Matrix, had fairly excellent Pad Thai, and slept in the arms of an angel who don't take no shit off noisy downstairs jerkfaces.
Finally, there is reason to do Mamo each and every week. Our stacked May has already rolled out one chart-maker and has several more waiting in the wings... hence, Iron Mamo. A couple on the couches at the eerily-quiet Starbucks listened to us record the show and congratulated us afterwards, so it must be reasonably good, right?
For the last six people on planet Earth who hadn't heard this, Del Toro is signed and locked for The Hobbit and The Second Film, and is moving to New Zealand for 4 years to do it. Wish I was. There's a good interview on TORN here.
And for the other six people who hadn't heard, we posted a cracklin' Mamo last week wherein we laid down our picks for the summer of '08. I picked Indy; he picked Batman. It's '89 all over again at Mamo 112.
Sittin' in the Starbucks, rockin' the Indian pop music.
Siegels triumphant! With everything else seemingly Superman-related this week (and for some reason, I'd just read The Escapists last week, which made me think about reading Kavalier & Clay a second time), half of Siegel & Shuster (or the descendents thereof) now co-owns Superman again. (Shit, I fucked up the tenses in there somewheres, but the sentence is too complicated to go back and fix it.) Neil Gaiman twigged to the most interesting idea, which is that technically, the Siegel family could negotiate Superman licensing with a company that isn't DC. Not that I am particularly advocating a Superman vs. The Sentry smackdown in the Marvelverse, but it opens the mind to the possibilities. I'm all for creators (or their great-grandkids) getting their share, but at some point Superman should just enter the public domain. Ain't nobody owning the copyright on Jesus, is there?
Meanwhile, Dr. Pepper will give a free can of pop to every person in America (except Slash) if Chinese Democracy actually gets released in 2008. Frankly, this just makes me want to see how they'd even manage it, were they called upon to do so. How do you pull off a day-and-date complete-citizenry mass distribution? Well, I guess it wouldn't have to be day-and-date. But not doing so might actually be even harder, logistics-wise.
(I think too much about logistics.)
I have read the entirety of Nextwave, and have pronounced it good, and cruelly short.
Yesterday was goddamned thick and satisfying. After the stock was done bubblin', me and Sarafina went to Little Italy in search of Italian music; then there were non-B-Boyz burritos at Burro Burritos, which are just sensational, by the way. Check 'em. Then there was gift shopping aplenty (they're really starting to like me at the Labyrinth, I'll tells ya), then there was dinner with Christy and the widest cost-to-noodle-bowl-size ratio ever, and then a completely directionless and in many ways amoral Mamo with Matty Price at Marché in the middle of the night. (Oh, if only "night" were spelled with an M.) Lots of stuff jammed into a day and with fresh air in the... er... air, finally enough stamina in me to actually allow for all the running around.
There was, as I'm sure you've heard, also Earth Hour, which meant flicking the switches on all the power bars at 8:00 and sitting in the living room at 3QF drinking curiously strong wine, with candles n' shit. I've been saying it since '03 and I'll repeat: screw this one-hour deal, let's have full dedicated blackout nights 3 times a year (when it's warm). We shouldn't need reminding about things like this.
Peaceable times to you all.
"Oh my god, in a minute and thirty seconds I'll be eating burrito." - Sarafina D.
Matty Price and I came together last night to talk Heath Ledger and the Oscars, and to prove that two white guys cannot be trusted to remember the name of the Three Six Mafia. But you knew that. Voila le podcast.
Last night the girl and I (and the sister-in-girl) went to see The Last Unicorn - yes we did - and why did nobody tell me about the frickin' pirate cat??? Honestly, I came home and nearly sawed Zam's front right forearm off. First of all: she don't need it. Second: I've been considering making Zam my official pirate animal buddy (i.e. Jack the Undead Monkey, only in Zam form) for a good while now. Third and most important: cats with peglegs are apparently gifted in the dispensing of homilies. Where's the downside, Internet? I'm not seeing it.
After the movie, there was much merriment with all the various YouTube-related remixes of things related to, but not limited to, The Last Unicorn. And then four hours of not being able to get that song out of my head.
Today started in a colourful whirlwind of chocolate fountains and knit heart-shaped pirate skulls, and then turned into a minor mid-afternoon frenzy wherein I tried, and failed, to do any of the six miscellaneous tasks assigned me by the Powers That Be. In the eveningtimes Matty Price and I drove out to Bloor West Village to go to the Yellow Griffin, which in the three years since I was last there with Kate, has started serving 35 different gourmet hamburgers. I had one with Stilton, walnuts, and roast garlic. It was, perhaps, the best hamburger I've ever eaten. We recorded a fuck-the-Golden-Globes Mamo at an extremely noisy Starbucks, and whisked home on the rainy Lakeshore.
High on the cravings list right now:
Almond butter (bought some, so this craving is all but dead)
A Piece of the Action (every time I catch it on WBS I end up watching it for like an hour)
I have a tiny but deep cut on my left middle finger. The result is that there is a really gorgeous blood stain on the "e" key of my nice white keyboard at home, along with a supporting horizontal smear along the top of my screen where I use my middle finger to push it open in the morning. OK, to everyone else, this seems gross. To me, it's proof I exist.
Matty Price and I recorded the year-in-review Mamo last night; you may enlisten by enclicking this enlink. Large tracts of it will come as very little surprise to anyone who is, oh I don't know, reading this blog right now, but I do find it entertaining that my partner and I have ended up on opposite sides of this divisive format war dealie. In fact, I'm feeling very much like a man on my own in the cold lately: Chris went HD-DVD, and so did my uncle. I am the Sole Blu.
I am going to have to start re-cracking Snapdragon tonight or tomorrow. I've let it - and everything - slide for a really, really long time. (Have you seen Extreme Steve lately? No, neither have I.) I also have a new funnybook in mind that I might try to draft out for Sasha to draw, and at least one script idea that it is officially well past time I got started on. Let's make it a productive January, rather than an oh-god-I-wish-I-was-dead January like usual.
On a more meat-and-potatoes-and-bedroom-windows level, there is a very wide gulf between the things I am doing, and the things I would like to be doing. But I can see the other side from here.
You know what Bex gave me for Christmas? A goddamned rum jug. An actual earthenware jug, for rum. Obviously (as the title of this post indicates), she also gave me a rug. Together, these things make a fine little roll-off-the-tongue phrase which would be suitable for an album name or perhaps a sex act. I'm quite pleased.
More good news: Bex and I finally got around to Suck It: Two! OK, I admit I didn't quite twig to the fact that it has actually been nearly three months since we did Suck It: One. That's shameful. But it's out there now.
While on the subject of podcasting, right after I wrote that thing about how moviesTO had hit its hundredth show and was doing fine, moviesTO got shitcanned. Well maybe shitcanned is the wrong word and maybe it will rise phoenix-like yet again, but for now, it's taking a breather. Which should demonstrate to you why I should never say anything out loud, ever, for I possess the secret of the Deplorable Word.
I got the last tickets to tomorrow night's sneak of There Will Be Blood. I am so fucking proud of myself you'd almost think I'd fought zombies.
Mamo #104: For a compass, it's got a lousy sense of direction.
WHY THE FUCK didn't I think of that to use as the title of my review. WHY. FUCK. Stupid Matty Price and his genius wordplay. Well anyways, file this under things to do on a snow day.